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Chap. 49: Team Rocket, Revealed

"Potions are a miracle," Alex muttered. That Self Destruct had caused a lot of damage. Not just to the Pokémon he and Elle had just battled against, but to themselves, and the cavern as a whole. There had been two miners dressed in a more practical version of the same black outfit, using both their own physical labor and Pokémon to work at the far end of the cavern when they had come in. Alex remembered one taking off as he and Elle made their presence known, but the other had stayed to either watch the battle or keep working. Now that the dust and debris was starting to settle, there was no sign of him.
He had either escaped, or been buried beneath the rubble that now choked that end of the underground chamber. Half the wall on that side seemed to have collapsed, and not a small number of stalactites or bedrock granite had come down around he and his lover's heads, too. Spike was, fortunately, the only Pokémon he could see that had been hit.

Fortunate, at least, because the Larvitar's horn had the tiniest little chip in it, while the two-foot wide rock had broken over it. The weight alone had sent his fierce little Rock-type sprawling as it landed agianst his head, but otherwise Spike seemed none the worse for wear, with a single Potion bringing him back to what the Pokégear on Alex's wrist called 'full health'.

Their other Pokémon, and themselves, had not fared as well. All-told, between he and Elle, they had entered Mount Moon with twenty-seven Potions. Now they had one left, though their teams were, by and large, back to full health. Cock was down a sliver on the familiar green bar, Lingus a little more than that, for she had thrown herself over Surtr, knocking the Ponyta to the ground and suffering some burns herself to protect him from the falling rocks and dust. Elle's team had mostly been put away in their balls, and had fared a lot better, but she was more hurt herself.

Nearly deafened from the blast, in fact, and he'd had to use a whole Potion in each of her ears, and one on her face, to return both her hearing to what he hoped was full capacity, and to take care of a hundred or more scrapes and cuts from the shrapnel ranging from paper-thin to pebble-sized that had blasted her directly. Alex himself was bruised and battered, but he would be alright with just time and rest, nothing worse than a scraped elbow and bruised upper arm from where he had hit the ground after the explosion lowered his own green bar.

But it could have been much worse.

He knew, because Elle told him during their treatment of each other and the Pokémon what the scruffy-looking, tattooed Team Rocket member had threatened her with. Rape, repeatedly, and then sold into forced and drug-addicted prostitution? No, thank you, but no.

His own part, indoctrinated into serving Rocket or being killed, was brushed by the wayside as far as he was concerned. Vaan's assault on them in Pewter City was one thing, knowing about them even then quite another. But this time, knowing Rocket really did know their names, was... disconcerting.

They were being watched. And watched for.

Why? Alex didn't think, despite what Maline Greengrass might say, he or Elle were truly anything remarkable. Yes, they seemed to be among the upper tier of players as far as battle skill went. Yes, their teams repeatedly went up against other combatants, even other players, and came out on top. But that was normal for a Pokémon game, wasn't it? They had lost against Nadine Minier, after all. Struggled to get their first Badges, both winning practically by the skin of their teeth.

What made them special? Not just to Maline, but to Team Rocket?

Alex didn't know, but he was starting to wonder several things. Had Maline picked him out because of his relationship to Ward Shipping and Logistics? Was he being given different treatment because of his father? Elle was nobody, though, at least as far as either of them knew.

Skilled, yes, apparently. If she'd hacked her way into the Pacific Mega-City civic database and altered her own vital records so convincingly that GameFreak had barely noticed, then decided to let it slide for their own reasons, then she was good... but was that worth putting her in a special place, set apart from the other players who were equally skilled in different ways?

It didn't make any sense. Something about it wasn't adding up, and it was something big. At least, Alex had the sense that it was. There were far too many unknowns to calculate, too many improbabilities without enough context to make sense of them. But in the sheer number of questionable events, words, and choices, the shape of something both immense and dark was slowly coming into view.

The problem was, it was all just in bits and pieces. Like he was putting together an old-fashioned holo-puzzle with fifteen thousand pieces, and only had a few hundred, no two of which actually connected, yet had just enough consistency around the edge of each shape to hint at a larger whole.

"What I'd give for a hot mineral bath right now," Elle groaned as she sat up, rubbing some of their penultimate Potion into her left shoulder. "But I'm not hiking my ass back down there for it."

"Me, neither," Alex replied, "You good to stand up? Don't go too fast if you're dizzy. Your health bar is fine, but..."

Elle sat up slowly, and accepted his help while she pushed to her feet. She took a few steps, then slowly bent her neck from side to side, testing out each limb and movement in turn. "I'm stiff, but I'll live," she declared, "mostly just lingering soreness. You? Your eyebrow is still bleeding a little."

Alex nodded, then reached up idly to swipe the blood away. One might have thought that, as a child of a wealthy (or moderately wealthy, anyway) family, Alex would have grown up with a low pain tolerance.

The opposite was true. He had been singled out for most of his life in school by people who wanted access to his lunch money, or to intimidate him into being their friend, or simply to bully him because he was physically larger than most, and they thought beating him up would make them seem tough. Some, he thought, might even have done so because they wanted a challenge.

Alex had literally grown up fighting, so that his father had sent he, Cora, and Colt to self-defense courses as young as ten years old. He had taken to them like a fish to water in some ways, because even though Alex disliked violence in general, he also carried a warrior's protective spirit, and had thrown himself into the lessons with abandon.

He had never truly competed in tournaments, because his old Sensei had thought such showmanship a waste of time, but rather than fight and sometimes win, his record against his bullies had shifted to nearly always dominating them completely by high school. At the time of his graduation, in his final year, Alex had been in five fights with local toughs, the last against four at once. He had still won, though it had not been without cost. He was not a great fighter, but he could take a hit, and roll with the ones he couldn't dodge. He could dish it out, too, if needed.

He was used to pain.

That didn't mean he liked it. So he groaned as he stood up tall too, and hitched his much lighter pack onto his shoulder. "We should probably think about getting out of here now."

"Yeah," Elle replied distractedly, "No idea how, though. That cave-in might've blocked part of the route. The way back's clear, I think, but..."

"Not a good option. Shit... well, let's at least go check it out. Maybe, if nothing else, we can have Diglett and Cock Dig us a way out? Or through the rock slide?"

"You can just call him Dildo," Elle giggled, "I mean, you talk about Cock all the time..."
"Not as much as you do," Alex shot back, "I'm only talking about one. You talk about a bunch of them."

"Maybe, but I- Hey, what's that?"

Alex followed her finger. High on the wall on the opposite end of the cave, a rope-ladder snaked out of what he had, at first, taken just for a shadow.

Watching, he didn't see Elle sneak the stones she had swiped from the mine-cart earlier into her backpack. "A ladder. It might be a trap... more Rockets."

"Or it might be a way out, even if we have to go through them. Your team can still fight, mine's half-fresh. We have to try, Alex."

He sighed, "Yeah, you're right. Let's go. At least I don't see anyone coming down."

It wasn't easy climbing the thing. It wasn't actually a rope ladder, but flexible ladder made from cables and bars that swayed as he tried to climb. Elle had wanted to go first, but Alex had insisted he test it because of the weight difference between them. Loki and Nike, Elle's Gastly and now Pidgeotto, were flying through the chamber behind him to watch his back, because Alex knew his own Pokémon might be vulnerable at the top, and he certainly would be. None of them could climb or fly, however, so it was up to Elle's team to keep him safe for now.

Fortunately, there was not an attack coming toward him the moment Alex peeked over the lip into the dark crevice.

What there was, was a set of pale, blue-white eyes with dark pupils at the center. "Cle...?"

They blinked.

Alex did, too.

"Cle- Clefa?"

The words were definitely questioning, he thought, but Alex didn't dare move. That was a Pokémon, one he wasn't familiar with, though he could make a guess based on Mount Moon's history. A rare Pokémon, in fact. The crevice behind it was dark, so it was hard to judge distance, but Alex thought the eyes were perhaps ten feet or so away, and the only source of light between he and it. At least the ladder seemed secure, affixed to the rock with pitons a foot past the lip of the crack.

"Uh, hi," he greeted.

"Faieeeyy."

The sound was low, drawn out, compared to the higher-pitched, questioning tones. Warning.

"I'm not gonna hurt you," he told the creature, hoping it understood. Then he ducked, and called down, hoping it wouldn't startle the creature, "Elle, there's a Pokémon up here. Not sure what kind, but I'm not sure it's a way out."

"Catch it, or scare it off," she called back, some eighty feet below him, now standing by the fallen portion of the cavern. "I don't think I can get through here."

When he looked back up, the eyes were gone.

Slowly, carefully, Alex felt his way up and into the darkness, until he felt secure enough within the diagonally-leaning crack to stand up, half reclined against the granite, to fumble for his flashlight.

The light revealed quite a lot in the small space. The crevice itself wasn't that deep, perhaps thirty feet, enough his beam reached its end. Droppings and small stones lined the bottom of the space, as if they had all been placed deliberately to form a bottom in the narrow, angled crevice. A walkway.

A walkway meant frequent traffic, even if the ladder seemed disused, far older than most of Team Rocket's gear.

It was what was beyond the crevice that captured Alex's attention, though. Not more rock, or a single cowering Pokémon. No, it was space. Another cavern. One where he now saw a pinkish, spherical Pokémon with pointed ears, stubby arms and legs, standing two or so feet tall at the edge of his flashlight. It flinched at the beam, and he redirected it downward.

The eyes opened again, this time not just glowing but shining brightly, far more so than his meager hand-held light. Alex flinched too, nearly dropped his flashlight, and had to lift one arm to shield his eyes, "Agh, fuck! Stop, stop! I'm sorry! Shit, I didn't mean to shine it in your eyes, turn it off!"

The eyes blinked, and once again the only light was his own.
"Cle. Cle-Fa, Ree-re."

He blinked. No... he wasn't imagining things. That Clefairy- it had to be, one of the ancient, first Fairy-types with that name and this location- had just beckoned him with its short, clawed forearm. "Uh... You want me to follow you?"

It nodded unmistakably. "Cle."

"Ah- Alright. Let me call my friend, then."

The Clefairy nodded again, then waved him back, as if to say, 'go on, don't waste my time'.

He turned back to the edge, glancing back once to see the pink Pokémon still waiting for him with at least feigned patience, the darker tips of its pointed ears twitching occasionally. He watched it blink once, the eyes shining now that it was facing him in the dark.

Alex shook his head, angling his flashlight down carefully. "Elle! Elle, you can come up! I think it's trying to show us a way out!"

"Nice! Be right there! You need Loki or Nike to fight anything, you just tell 'em."

A minute or so later, the ladder started to shake, but Alex didn't want to lean that far over the edge to watch Elle climb.

He would just have to trust her. It had nothing to do with a fear of heights in his case...

Even underground.

"Whoah," Elle exhaled as she peered through the narrow gap between Alex's chest and the rock wall as the Pokémon, "those are rare as hell. Haven't really been seen since Gen Twelve."

"I know," Alex told her, "But we aren't trying to catch it. I- I mean, it's just talking in its name, but it like, moved its hand to follow it."

"Cle," the Pokémon said again, this time more firmly, and made the same gesture.

"See?"

"Let's go, then."

Alex nodded, and started squirming through the crevice. He couldn't have crawled through most of it, but standing up, he could just squeeze through sideways, inching along with his back scraping against the stone. Elle, thinner, had an easier time, her modest breasts still clearing the space his chest couldn't because her frame was just that much narrower.

Eventually, he made it through, pushing past the last, narrowest spot with a slight tear in his shirt.

He gasped again, as not one pair of glowing eyes, but hundreds, blinked. They were almost like stars, he thought, shining in the dark. Some close, some far, but above, below, across, and to either side of a mostly spherical chamber he could just see the faintest shapes of thanks to the accumulated light of all of the softly-glowing eyes. Elle gasped too, her own sound choking out with an, "Aww, they're cute!"

Alex turned back to smile at her, then froze.

"Uh... Don't turn around."

Of course, she did, and Elle screamed.

Not for long, fortunately, because all of the Clefairy screeched loudly in response, making Alex's already abused eardrums tremble in agony, but he couldn't blame her.

It wasn't every day you came face-to-face, just inches, from a long-dead and slowly rotting corpse.

Or a skeleton with just a little meat on its bones next to that one.

Both wore the uniforms of Team Rocket, the skeleton's a little more worn through time, and both had been... damaged. The scrapes, cuts, and even breaks in several of the bones suggested only one thing to Alex: This was the fate of those who came to this crevice without permission.

He hoped it was that, anyway, and that he hadn't just lead Elle into a trap.

Because that was a lot of Pokémon.

But they weren't attacking him.

In fact, the one who had first beckoned him to follow seemed to shout at the others, "Cl- Fa- R-Ree, cle!"

The raucous noise stopped quickly.

The pink ball gestured at them, and used a long string of syllables to explain something. Alex had no idea what, but the rest of the Fairy Pokémon listened intently.

Then they all started to talk at once.

Finally, a consensus seemed to be reached, because the debate and discussion ended almost at once, with several Pokémon still watching them, but the majority going back to whatever it was they were doing before. Some were caring for young, Cleffa he thought, and subtly lifted his 'Dex to scan as many as he could. Others were eating, sleeping, and in a few cases, mating. A couple, he was surprised to see, were drawing what looked like star-charts on the rock wall of part of the cavern, one littered with similar drawings.

He was near-blinded again when the first Clefairy turned its brights back on, this time aimed not at him, but at the far wall. There, a wider tunnel began, hidden behind what had been many softly pink-white glowing eyes. "Cle."

It beckoned, and turned away, its slow, waddling gait strangely hurried now, as its curly, fluffy tail swayed behind it.

"Come on, I guess," Alex told Elle, and she took his hand as she followed him down into the bowl of the chamber, and then up the other side, enraptured by the Pokémon and the nest they had been led into.

Once they were some distance beyond, still following the brightly-shining Flash- or maybe Spotlight, according to his 'dex's scan of the Pokémon ahead of them- Elle asked quietly, "How long do you think that nest has been there?"

"A long time, judging by the drawings," he replied, "Maybe hundreds of years. That ladder's old."

"The bodies weren't," she added with a shudder, "The, uh- the newer one was maybe two months old? The older, maybe... a year? They picked it clean, I think. Ate it, maybe, or something else did."

"Natural order of things," Alex told her.

"Y- Yeah. But... I mean, that's- that's a weird thing to put in a game, Alex."

"Maybe... but it does happen. We saw a body in Viridian, right?"

"Yeah."

Still, something about her questioning it brought Alex's mind back to his own doubts and questions. Was Yggdrassil, or the game itself, that well programmed? Was the AI so advanced that it could generate all facets of a world so that it truly did seem real, with both light and dark? Or was that a deliberate thing that some enterprising designer had added to the game for those willing and able to explore?

Either way, it was a bit weird to think about.

Ahead, the Clefairy stopped. "Fay."

It still beckoned them closer, looking back, and pointing up. Sunlight!

At least, it looked like it to Alex. Reflected sunlight on rock, perhaps reflected again, but they were near the surface, he was sure of it. A whiff, just a whiff, of more-fresh air tickled his nose.

Alex grinned, "That's the way out, huh?"

The Clefairy nodded, clearly able to understand what he was saying, just like their own Pokémon could. Had this one, at one point, been captured by a Trainer? Had it learned how humans talked from that? Or was there something else going on, yet again?
He started to climb, only for a strangely powerful tug on his shorts to bring him to a halt. "Ree," it said, eyes narrowing. "Ree," it repeated, then traced a shape in the air with the hand not holding him.

"Ree? I don't understand," he told it, but let go of the rock and dropped the six inches or so back to the tunnel, one of dozens they had taken that seemed to snake throughout the mountain. If they hadn't had a guide, Alex was increasingly sure they would have died under Mount Moon.

"Fay-Ree," the Clefairy groused, strangely human-like, then turned to the rock. Using one of its strong, short claws, it scratched a shape. A familiar shape: An R.

"Ree." It pointed up, three times, harshly, then back at the R.

"Rocket," Elle exhaled.

Alex nodded, "I... think you're right. There are Rockets up there?"

Again, the Clefairy nodded.

"You... don't like them?"

This time, it shook its head, then made several shadow-boxing motions with its fists. It pointed down, then at Alex and Elle, and then boxed again, "Ree," and pointed up.

"You... want us to fight them?"

It nodded again, and smiled, showing several very sharp teeth.

"You... want them to drive them away."

A more fervent head-shake.

"Al... Alright. I'll do what I can," Alex told the creature.

"Me too," Elle added.

The Clefairy smiled, then started to climb too, its eyes dimming to somewhere above the barely-there glow, but far less brightly than the Spotlight.

"I... guess we keep following, a little while longer."

"I think he wants to fight too," Elle whispered, as she started up after it.

"Cle," was the only response, harsh and firm, almost growling.

Alex shook his head. Sometimes, it was almost like the game was too realistic, he thought, as he headed upward as well.

They were, indeed, near the surface as the three of them carefully, quietly, crawled out of a crack in the floor of a massive, man-made chamber. It stretched hundreds of feet on a side, and at least a hundred high. Towering machinery filled one end in rows. Scrapers, dredgers, one that Alex recognized as an industrial mining pump, which had hoses as big around as his torso snaking into a much larger shaft to their right, and then out the other side. Trucks of all sorts, mostly dumpers, diggers, backhoes, front-loaders, were arranged in neat rows. A line of them was filled continually by several of the tractors and a conveyor belt that only paused briefly while a new truck took its place.

Alex gulped as he looked at it. The operation was far, far larger than he had thought.

On the right, an equally man-carved space stretched another hundred feet across, with a road snaking down into a valley where a distant city could be seen, with glittering lines around it falling down cliffs.

Waterfalls, maybe.

The only problem was, there were literally hundreds of workers he could see. Drivers, too.

"I don't think I can drive off this many people," Alex told the Clefairy.

It snorted, a strangely human sound, then waved a hand toward the group dismissively. Then it turned to the right, and jabbed a hand forward. "Ree."

"Oh. Not the mining itself, but them."

"Cle!"
"I don't know, Alex," Elle whispered, "If we attack them, its' sure to get attention."

"Probably," he agreed, "But look, the regular workers are just wearing regular work clothes. This mine's probably actually legal. And if I'm right, it's... hold on."

On a hunch, he lifted his Pokégear, and called up the map. It took him a few seconds to find it while they sheltered behind a parked flatbed, but he pointed with a grim smile, "See, this isn't technically Mount Moon. That's why they can mine. We must've passed beyond it to this other mountain, if it has a name. That's the border there, I think, the dotted line."

"Which means Rocket's a different problem," Elle nodded her understanding, "Alright. Well... if they aren't working together, they're at least using the same tunnels. I mean, they're right here, out in the open. But I don't know, they... they kind of give me the creeps. Just look at them. Their uniforms are different, and they don't have that... that uniform, rank-and-file feel. I don't think they're Grunts."

"You're probably right," Alex hissed back, "remember that woman mentioned something about Agents, and a new Operative in charge? Those are probably the Agents. Maybe the one sitting down is the Operative? But at least they don't have a lot of Pokéballs, and just one out."

The 'one out' was a vicious-looking thing. It was cat-like, with a shining spot on its forehead, and walked either on two legs or four as it pleased the thing, while it prowled around the legs of the two humans nearby. It came to their knees, or thereabouts, and its off-white fur was matted with scars, while blood lined a few spots on its face. Or maybe it was just stained. If they were lucky.

The man and woman were even more alarming, if anything. Each only carried one more 'ball, but something about both of them screamed danger.

The man was a little taller, with soft lavender-purple hair cut short, his body lean and muscular, more toned than Alex's, and he moved like he knew how to use it as he pointed to some sort of detail over the shoulder of the man sitting at a computer who was wearing a lab-coat. The woman wasn't as lean, but she moved like a predator, almost like the cat-Pokémon did, stalking back and forth behind the other two. She was curvy in the same way a Nurse Joy was, but a bit thinner overall, with pronounced abs showing on her midriff-baring shirt, and, he was pleasantly surprised by, a tiny bit of underboob. She was gorgeous, in some ways, if you could get past what to him seemed like a truly obvious level of insanity. Her hair was long and fell to her waist in a mostly-straight line, somehow held out from her body by its stiffness or an excessive amount of styling product, with an inward curl at the back.

She snarled, just audible over the sound of machinery on the opposite side of the cavern, "This is taking too long, James. Something's wrong. Team six and nine never did report, and that wasn't just an unplanned blast. You heard the workers, that was a Pokémon's Self Destruct. The Wall has fallen. We need to get down there and stop Vaan's bogeymen."

"Relax," the purple-haired man replied with a chuckle, louder and more clear than the woman's growl, "they'll be coming to us soon enough. We mapped every bit of those tunnels, and there's only three ways out. All three join up just inside the mine entrance. They have to come out this way. We'll get them."

"We'd better. I don't want those invaders walking our planet any more than is necessary."

Alex and Elle exchanged a suddenly worried look. He didn't need her to say it, didn't need her to give words to the question he had on his mind, too. Invaders?